


043 Entwined

by rhicola



Series: Bethyl Prompt List [10]
Category: The Walking Dead
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-21
Updated: 2015-04-21
Packaged: 2018-03-25 01:24:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3791404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhicola/pseuds/rhicola
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>add-on to the conversation they shared on the porch in "Still".</p>
            </blockquote>





	043 Entwined

Beth pressed her lips together, her eyes trained on Daryl’s face as he stared thoughtfully at the knife he held in his hands. Her body still swayed like she’d spent the day in the waves of the ocean. Her skin felt balmy with the heat that rose from it as the remaining moonshine ran through her veins. She sighed and sipped from her mason jar, grimacing at the bitter aftertaste as she swallowed.

Daryl stabbed the boards of the porch they sat on and looked up once she began speaking again. “You gotta stay who you are…not who you were.” _A nobody_ , he’d explained to her, but she knew it wasn’t true. Someone as considerate and caring as Daryl Dixon couldn’t have been a nobody before this. “Places like this—” she went on and stopped short, thinking through her words.

She couldn’t imagine growing up in a…shack like this. Messy and rundown, hardly a place to sit let alone a place to lay your head down at night. _A home for a drunk_ , she thought, and then shook her head. “You have to put it away.”

He hummed softly, as if chewing her words over. “What if you can’t?” he asked, making Beth sit forward off the post she was leaning heavily against.

“You have to,” she rebutted quickly, shaking her head from side to side, “or it kills you.”

She remembered the farmhouse and how slowly—but surely—she put away her attempt to end it all; the suffering and loss that she didn’t want to live through anymore. She took her sorrow and doubt, and turned it into hope, like she used to take a sheet of paper and fold it into a crane when she was younger. She covered her scar, gulped back her shame, and moved on to better things, better people. If she could do it, Daryl could.

Smiling, Beth caught Daryl’s gaze and pointed at her chest, her heart. “Here.”

Her toothy grin faded as he dropped his eyes to his knife again, which he chiseled nervously into the wood beside him.

Beth sat upright, leaning too far to one side as she crossed her legs beneath her and giggling because of the feeling it gave her in her tummy. She held up her hand, her pinky raised toward Daryl. “Promise me, Mr. Dixon,” she commanded, wiggling her pinky so that her pale skin reflected the moonlight. “Promise me you’ll be the last man standing.”

The corners of Daryl’s lips tugged up slightly as he mimicked her position and held his pinky out, too. He hesitated and lifted his eyes to hers once more.

“’S’long as you promise to be with me.”

With an earnest nod, Beth entwined her pinky with his and squeezed tightly before pressing a kiss to the side of her hand. “I promise.”

Daryl smiled fully now and kissed his own hand like she had hers. “Me, too.”


End file.
